Healthcare costs among patients with macular oedema associated with non-infectious uveitis: a US commercial payer’s perspective

Abstract

Objective To describe patient characteristics and healthcare costs associated with uveitic macular oedema (UME) in US clinical practices from a commercial payer’s perspective.Methods and analysis The IBM MarketScan Commercial Subset (1 October 2015–31 March 2020) was used to identify patients with non-infectious uveitis (NIU), with or without UME. Patients with UME at any time were further classified into subgroups of patients who received a UME diagnosis during the study period and those who received a UME diagnosis and local steroid injection (LSI) during the study period. Demographic and clinical characteristics, NIU-related treatments and healthcare costs were described for each cohort and subgroup during the most recent 12 months of continuous health plan enrolment. Healthcare costs were also described by vision status among all patients with NIU.Results A total of 36 322 patients with NIU were identified, of whom 3 301 (9.1%) had UME and 33 021 (90.9%) had no UME. Patients with UME more frequently received NIU-related treatment compared with those without UME (64.6% vs 45.0%), particularly LSI treatment (12.5% vs 0.7%). Mean total all-cause healthcare costs per-patient-per-year (PPPY) were higher among patients with UME ($19 851) than patients without UME ($16 188) and were especially high among those with bilateral UME ($24 162). Further, vision loss was more commonly observed in those with UME versus those without UME (5.7% vs 2.2%) and a trend of increasing healthcare costs with increasing vision loss was observed.Conclusion NIU is associated with substantial clinical and economic burden, particularly when UME is present.